Orthodox Resources Against Pseudo-Evolution

WoodArch4033

WoodArch4033

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This will be a useful thread to have and I recommend sharing this thread outside of The Orthodoxy genre to others on this forum. I have a few resources against evolution from. Open this link https://saintkosmas.org/orthodox-survival-course and it has all of Father Seraphim of Platina's Orthodox Survival Courses, scroll to course 11 on evolution and you can either read or download a listen to it, it's only 15 pages. Here https://ia800906.us.archive.org/30/items/GenesisCreationAndEarlyManTheOrthodoxChristianVision/Genesis%2C%20Creation%20and%20Early%20Man%20The%20Orthodox%20Christian%20Vision.pdf is a pdf of Father Seraphim's collection on creation, read the introduction and find some other portions you like if you don't want to read all of it online. All Saints which have commented on evolution and Darwinism have been against it as a heresy. After all, it originates from pagan philosophy. Even Plato disagreed with the evolutionists of his day (all matter is eternal and it has simply gradually chaotically organized itself into more advanced fleshly beings.) Saints within the early centuries of the Church touched on this. Father Joseph Gleason touches on this in his video where he talks about a Russian Priest's project of systematically deconstructing evolution. https://worldwarnow.substack.com/p/aether-hour-ep-5-new-book-on-creationism#details https://sixdaycreation.substack.com/
Please contribute to this thread if you have good resources or arguments scientifically and theologically against evolution (doesn't have to be explicitly Orthodox)
 
There is also the following ongoing project to translate the three volume work -- Creation and Evolution -- of a Russian scientist (geologist)-turned-Orthodox-priest into English.



In addition, the above-mentioned work of Fr. Seraphim Rose is available in free pdf versions at various sites including the following:


EDIT: If the above link to the Creation and Evolution set is not displaying, just Google "Indiegogo + Evolution + Orthodoxy"
 
Jeremiah Branch said:
There is also the following ongoing project to translate the three volume work -- Creation and Evolution -- of a Russian scientist (geologist)-turned-Orthodox-priest into English.



In addition, the above-mentioned work of Fr. Seraphim Rose is available in free pdf versions at various sites including the following:


EDIT: If the above link to the Creation and Evolution set is not displaying, just Google "Indiegogo + Evolution + Orthodoxy"
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Here is more information about it:

 
The best secular case against evolution that I am aware of is Vox Day's mathematical analysis of the number of mutations required along with the time period required for those to distribute themselves among a species. The math simply does not work, not by orders of magnitude, for TENS to be true.

Here is one post with just the numbers:


His archive of posts and articles on the topic has a lot more (although there is some noise in the search results for "evolution").

 
I need to preface this with a warning - i do believe in a theistic evolution of sorts. I’ve always seen evolution as a scientific narrative by studying rock records. The Bible is a prescientific metanarrative that contains the truth of truths.

On the old forum someone pointed out the problem with my view is that theistic evolution implies the existence of death before the fall. Other orthodox who share my view point out “sin and death.” Any death that occurred prefall was just simple predation - no more evil than you eating a cheeseburger or the end result of entropy. It was sinless. Sin in combination with death - death that results from sin is post fall.

With that being said - I will watch this thread since I’m open to information that contradicts mainstream edumacation. The big guy said “know them by their fruits” and scientism (not science - scientism - two different things) is the nasty fruit of the evolution theory. Evolution theory gave us the IFLScience clowns.

When it comes to your soul I seriously believe dumb is good. If this gets in the way of your faith, you’re better off believing in the 6 days 6,000 yo old earth.
 
KulturedKaveman said:
I need to preface this with a warning - i do believe in a theistic evolution of sorts. I’ve always seen evolution as a scientific narrative by studying rock records. The Bible is a prescientific metanarrative that contains the truth of truths.

On the old forum someone pointed out the problem with my view is that theistic evolution implies the existence of death before the fall. Other orthodox who share my view point out “sin and death.” Any death that occurred prefall was just simple predation - no more evil than you eating a cheeseburger or the end result of entropy. It was sinless. Sin in combination with death - death that results from sin is post fall.

With that being said - I will watch this thread since I’m open to information that contradicts mainstream edumacation. The big guy said “know them by their fruits” and scientism (not science - scientism - two different things) is the nasty fruit of the evolution theory. Evolution theory gave us the IFLScience clowns.

When it comes to your soul I seriously believe dumb is good. If this gets in the way of your faith, you’re better off believing in the 6 days 6,000 yo old earth.
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Macroevolution, in the mainstream way it is explained, seems very unlikely to me. But I could see God creating the various creatures in waves, kind of like how it is explained in Genesis. Most types of creatures seem to have emerged during the Cambrian explosion, in a very short period of time relatively speaking. I could see, for example, a leopard evolving into a cheetah. In fact, we have species that can breed with each other, but whose offspring are sterile, such as a coyote and a wolf. Which seems to imply common origin. But for a unicellular bacterium to become a human being seems so outlandish. And we have never discovered fossils that show the intermediate species implied by such an evolutionary transition.

That being said, the 7000-year-old earth also seems improbable. Such a view requires us to believe man once lived among the dinosaurs. What is interesting though, is that recorded history only goes back about 6500 years. And around that time, all kinds of civilizations started emerging in the Middle East, China, etc. Perhaps the Flood wiped out all antediluvian records. Anything before that is pure conjecture.

I have also heard the theory that the consequences of the Fall are not restricted temporally. Meaning that it introduced death not only to the then present and future, but it was also retroactive and introduced death to the past.
 
KulturedKaveman said:
I need to preface this with a warning - i do believe in a theistic evolution of sorts. I’ve always seen evolution as a scientific narrative by studying rock records. The Bible is a prescientific metanarrative that contains the truth of truths.

On the old forum someone pointed out the problem with my view is that theistic evolution implies the existence of death before the fall. Other orthodox who share my view point out “sin and death.” Any death that occurred prefall was just simple predation - no more evil than you eating a cheeseburger or the end result of entropy. It was sinless. Sin in combination with death - death that results from sin is post fall.

With that being said - I will watch this thread since I’m open to information that contradicts mainstream edumacation. The big guy said “know them by their fruits” and scientism (not science - scientism - two different things) is the nasty fruit of the evolution theory. Evolution theory gave us the IFLScience clowns.

When it comes to your soul I seriously believe dumb is good. If this gets in the way of your faith, you’re better off believing in the 6 days 6,000 yo old earth.
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It sounds like your heart is willing to accept creationism, but your head is not. If that is the case, I would say focus on the secular arguments against evolution, and there are very good ones. I am an outlier in this regard, but I actually stopped believing in TENS (the theory of evolution by natural selection) before I became a Christian. When I looked into some of the stronger secular arguments against evolution, while I didn't necessarily have a position on what the right answer was, but it was clear that TENS was not it. This may be something that led me to Christianity, but it preceded any religious faith.

Look into the Vox Day links I provided above. Fred Reed (who is not Christian, or even religious at all) also wrote some excellent pieces tearing apart the case for TENS. Here is a link to one: https://www.unz.com/freed/darwin-unhinged-the-bugs-in-evolution/ There are others if you poke around.

The point here is that if you are struggling intellectually with the idea of creationism, know that there are very solid intellectual cases against evolution. Part of the problem with some of the early work against evolution (from the Discovery Institute, for instance) is that it was so agenda-driven and question-begging, that it really did not satisfy from an intellectual and scientific point of view. Happily, there are better arguments being put forward now, and many books on the subject (Darwin's Black Box et al).
 
Darwin refutes his own theory based on irreducible complexity of the cell (I.e cell 'motors' and so on), DNA (As a coded language this makes things even more complicated!), etc. Even on a macro scale, how do we go from 3-chambered to 4-chambered hearts adaptively, and how would this be an evolutionary advantage if the intermediary is corrupted!? What's the mechanism? Where are the dead intermediary fossils attesting to this phenomenon and how did the species even survive in the first place?

Microevolution, in terms of a wolf garnering thicker fur for colder environments, is fine, but a bear changing into a wolf given enough 'time and randomness' is absurd. (Just a hypothetical, not saying this is an actual theory bear > wolf).

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Arguably the most abominable serial killer ever says this after repenting in prison and turning to Christ:

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After his conversion, he is bludgeoned to death in the head by another inmate who was hearing demonic voices to kill Dahmer, and dies slowly.

I'm listening to Roy G. Ratcliff interviews, the preist that baptized and ministered to Dahmer in prison. Also got his book "Dark Journey Deep Grace".

Dahmer did a lot of super crazy things, but some that stick with me as telling, off the top off my head, is the incredibly creepy alter he was creating with skulls of those he killed, or the fact that he played the Exorcist movie on repeat to get in the mood, and all the while, he says he was only doing this for HIMSELF. He refers to it in a sort of mindless way.

Satanic deception is wild, and evolution is some of his best work.

If you've got the stomach and nerve, I recommend looking into this whole story in this light - you'll find it enlightening.
 
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When I first converted I had a hard time with the whole creation vs evolution thing, having fully submitted myself to the materialistic mindset, it was difficult for me to shake. Ultimately I resolved to set the issue aside and pray for answers.

It's clear to me now that theistic evolution doesn't work. It's essentially like trying to be an atheist and a theist at the same time. On the one hand you cannot accept that life can be anything other than a materialistic process, yet on the other you want to believe in an anthropology that is radically at odds with this. You end up proposing several billion years of evolution up until whatever point humans began to exist and then all of a sudden you transpose this narrative into the Biblical one and impose the Genesis fall narrative into it.

Either that or you have to dilute the entire Christian faith to being about some vague symbolic overlay on reality. That the fall was not a literal event, but rather a metaphor. But you have to be extremely careful about this sort of reasoning, because it often ends up making Christ's death a symbolic resolution to a symbolic problem that plays out in some sort of pragmatic Jordan Peterson-esque 'this is the best myth we have to solve our existential angst' situation.

Also lets not forget that evolution entails that our Lord, was not only the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, but descended from a monkey in the theistic evolutionary paradigm. As Saint Paisios rightly pointed out, this is blasphemy.

That is not mentioning any of the numerous issues with evolution itself, and the fact that is it patently unscientific. It's all just so stories, that have not even the vaguest hint of being observable, verifiable, or testable.
 
Lawrence87 said:
Either that or you have to dilute the entire Christian faith to being about some vague symbolic overlay on reality. That the fall was not a literal event, but rather a metaphor. But you have to be extremely careful about this sort of reasoning, because it often ends up making Christ's death a symbolic resolution to a symbolic problem that plays out in some sort of pragmatic Jordan Peterson-esque 'this is the best myth we have to solve our existential angst' situation.
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Not to advocate for evolution, but there certainly are parts of the Bible that are meant to be read symbolically. For example take Revelation 20:4-7
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5 But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. 7 Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison
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We know the thousand years is not meant to be taken literally because clearly more than 1000 years have passed since the first resurrection and the End Times have not yet come. The "thousand years" in this context just means a really long time. So I think we have to be careful of assuming a literal reading of every passage since that leads to many erroneous interpretations like those the Protestants have come up with regarding the End Times.

Personally, I have trouble believing the Garden of Eden is entirely literal. I don't see why God would have created a talking snake on Earth for example. The important thing is to always read each passage with Christ in mind and the message He is trying to convey. The historicity and scientific stuff is not critical for salvation, so I content myself with my ignorance.
 
Jeffery Dahmer says something along the lines of...if humans are just animals why can't we eat them too? Animals eat other animals. 💀

Evolution is nihilistic. It was a big part of the reason I fell hard with prostitutes, adultery, pornography, alcohol, drugs, and other selfish/immoral behavior. I worked for satan many years without knowing it.

We need to return to what Pageau calls the Symbolic World. The world his brother describes in his book "Language of Creation".

It's more sophisticated than some of the stuff we're presented with regarding theories of Creation.

It's not literal and it's not metaphorical. It's 'symbolic'. He's goes into this deeply in the book. It's complicated to understand and I'm just starting to get into it so I'm not the right person to teach about it.
 
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analyst_green said:
Not to advocate for evolution, but there certainly are parts of the Bible that are meant to be read symbolically. For example take Revelation 20:4-7


We know the thousand years is not meant to be taken literally because clearly more than 1000 years have passed since the first resurrection and the End Times have not yet come. The "thousand years" in this context just means a really long time. So I think we have to be careful of assuming a literal reading of every passage since that leads to many erroneous interpretations like those the Protestants have come up with regarding the End Times.

Personally, I have trouble believing the Garden of Eden is entirely literal. I don't see why God would have created a talking snake on Earth for example. The important thing is to always read each passage with Christ in mind and the message He is trying to convey. The historicity and scientific stuff is not critical for salvation, so I content myself with my ignorance.
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Okay but the context in Orthodoxy is always Patristic. If you read Genesis, Creation, and Early Man by Fr. Seraphim Rose it's clear that the Church Fathers regarded Genesis as history, whereas I don't think there is such an interpretation for that verse from Revelation.

These things are difficult to believe if you presuppose naturalism. A talking snake strikes us as absurd, something that atheists are keen to point out. For good measure there is also a talking donkey in the Bible. We believe in a God who has the power to do all things, and we are not called to question Him about the whys of it all. The fall narrative is essential to understanding Christ. If we relegate it to being a symbolic myth then there was no fall for Christ to restore.
 
People may not be aware of this but one of the first times that Christ appeared to St Paisios was specifically in relation to the question of evolution.

From the age of eleven [says Elder Paisios], I would read the lives of the Saints, I would fast and keep vigil. My older brother would take the books and hide them, but that didn’t stop me. I would just go into the forest and keep reading there.

Later, when I was fifteen, a friend of my brother named Costas told my brother, “I’ll make him willingly give up all this nonesense.” He came and explained to me Darwin’s theory of evolution. I was shaken by this, and I said, “I’ll go and pray, and, if Christ is God, He’ll appear to me so that I’ll believe. I’ll see a shadow, hear a voice—He will show me a sign.” That’s all I could come up with at the time.

So, I went and began to pray and make prostrations for hours; but nothing happened. Eventually I stopped in a state of exhaustion. Then something Costas had said came to mind: “I accept that Christ is an important man,” he had told me, “righteous and virtuous, Who was hated out of envy for His virtue and condemned by His countrymen.” I thought to myself, “since that’s how Christ was, even if He was only a man, He deserves my love, obedience, and self-sacrifice. I don’t want paradise; I don’t want anything. It is worth making every sacrifice for the sake of His holiness and kindness.”

God was waiting to see how I would deal with this temptation. After this, Christ Himself appeared to me in a great light. He was visible from the waist up. He looked at me with tremendous love and said, “I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in Me, even if he dies, he shall live” (Jn. 11:25). He was holding the Gospel in His left hand, open to the page where the same words were written.

With this event, the uncertainties that had troubled my soul were overcome, and in divine grace I came to know Christ as true God and Savior of the world. I was convinced of the truth of the God-man, not by men or books, but by the very Lord Himself, who revealed Himself to me even at this young age. Firmly established in faith, I thought to myself, “Come back now, Costas, if you want, and we’ll have a talk.”
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